Clockwork
by The Light From Street Lamps
Summary: A remake of "Alice is Dead". When Angela falls into Wonderland, it seems that everyone wants her dead. It's only with the help of a certain Cheshire Cat and Mad Hatter do things seem to fall into place, and simultaneously just get stranger... rated for Gore, Smut, and Triggering Content.


Clockwork.

_Previously "Alice is Dead"._

Prologue.

Due to the amount of people still following this story and offering reviews even after the mega-hiatus that transpired, I've decided to adapt it into another story, one longer, more detailed, and with more scenes that didn't make it to the beginning version. Hopefully this makes up for the wait that you had to go through! As always, "R&R", even though it's not obligation to review although it keeps me more willing to make chapters sooner. Of course, this is just the prologue, and I'll be switching POV's eventually as well as making it longer. Thanks for sticking around so long! (:

In the beginning it was simplistic. Nothing out of the ordinary, the same routines, the consistency to normality thick and weighing as it was every day. The sun flickered off the cobblestone streets, cement placing between them wearing away, the flowers planted in the field growing bright red (although it wasn't misheard of; all considering Angela's planting skills) and the tree holding placement of Ben's flower was in full bloom. A prime time to ask me to engage him, all things considering, and under Gill's impression of romance it was almost like an obligation. Like moments like these wouldn't happen again, they wouldn't grow in the same way the next season would, like the sun that made them bloom would shatter and consume them whole. Consume us whole. We were fit to be consumed. Days like those were only reinforcing the need to be one with the ground below us, subliminally, under cracked and ageing skin to the new and porcelain alike. I notice one of the shopkeepers walking outside, pausing only to take in the scenery before them as they made their way to the hospital. Jin had asked me to visit him soon which had me under the impression he thought I looked sickly.

Gill Stad held out that accursed object. The source behind the pain, the source behind the consumption of people and people the same. At the time I didn't know it, but a smile grew broadly across my face and I agreed fervently to which we embraced as old lovers and best friends in the middle of that area. I suppose a display like that would have been odd considering everyone's odd fascination with retaining the old ways, the same stature of morals that everyone once held so long ago. I didn't question it. It was normality. It was consumption for the old ways and routines. Everything is consumption, isn't it? Eat or be eaten. _Eat or be eaten. _I suppose I should have been cunning but how was I supposed to know that _I_ would be the one consumed by Wonderland?

It wasn't long before I was requested in the presence of Chase Gotovit holding the same object given by Gill, the blue feather eventually becoming an object of mocking. The corner of his lip was turned upwards but his eyes didn't show the same discipline as the rest of him. He seemed sad, empty, hopeful. The rustic area of the Inn's bar was suddenly feeling emptier than they appeared given the circumstances. He slid it over the table quietly, anticipation present in his fingers. I took it from him even more slowly, fingers touching the rough edges where it had fallen off the bird, and I figured he must have had it for some time judging by the dried mud on its base. He mustn't have washed it under the pretences that he hadn't anticipated Gill's proposal so soon.

I must have backed away from the bar because my back had found itself hit by the edge of the table, ignoring the feeling of impending bruising as a nervous smile crossed my lips. A breath, and I suddenly felt sick. Chase's smile had turned into a frown as he started to get out of his placement from behind the stead, his tone worrying but faraway. "_Angela?"_ I think he said. _"Angela are you sick?"_. My voice must have warbled and it sounded like cotton in my mouth, something along the lines of "I need a breath". By the time he had reached the outer limits of his workplace, I was already pushing past the large wooden doors and into the fresh air permitted by the outside world. It didn't grant me relief, but instead the awareness that something bad was occurring to me. His fingers touched my arm, but all that was left of me was not there.

I had fallen, but I had never touched the ground.

Music was present. Music was there, hidden playing from somewhere, and momentarily I had thought that I had awoken in the bar if it wasn't for the dirt that had slipped into my mouth, the taste old and undisturbed, and my fingers met my lips whilst my eyes were still closed to scrape it out with my nails. It took me seconds to realize I couldn't hear the voices. Had Chase left me on the ground? Had he left to find people? Had I suffered so bad of a concussion he panicked?

The left side of my body was in pain, that I remember. The details were blurry. They still are. My knees felt shaky, and my fingertips cold, and I clenched my hands to warm them up but it was done in vain. Straggling to get up, almost tipping over from the sudden weight to my incapable knees, I scanned the area. A hole? Why would a hole be there?

I think there was panic. I can't remember anything else since I got here.

I remember there was a girl, sitting in the corner, her back turned to me. Her dress was spattered with something, and for a moment I think "blood?" questioned past the deepest reaches of my mind. A sense of dread overcame me. There was something wrong here, and I couldn't figure out what, but if she needed help who was I to deny it to her? Had she been here long? Had she waited for me? Improbabilities, but not impossibilities.

My hand reached out to her.

She had fallen apart, merely dust and bones by now.

Her eyes were empty and hollow. They had been picked clean.

The shock was enough to send me backing up I think. I think because these moments are blurry, I think because these are moments that I had forced back into the pitch blackness where my other memories resided, and I think my foot triggered an opening in the rock strategically placed by some soul who had dug out the hole I was in. At least twenty feet below, they had thought this well. Only now that I'm recalling these memories, I have to wonder if the girl dug that hole and couldn't get out afterwards. It would seem logical. Someone put her there, and I didn't know who.

And I remember tumbling, tumbling out past dirt chips that stuck into my fingers and exposed skin, sharp vines that had grown scraggly out of the surrounding patted mud (now dirt from being dry for so long) sticking into the epidermis that was my being. I remember tasting blood, as it had cut a bit of my mouth on the way down, dripping steadily into my maw. It would have caused a scab, I was sure, but I didn't notice it until later until they mentioned it. _He mentioned it._

The music was now faraway, gone almost like my mind had forcefully left it out. I remember there being trees. Endless rows of trees, branching off into what seemed to be clearings at the time. Or at least, I try to think there did. I do remember noticing the tree trunk first, the knife placed securely into the wood by some poor soul that had left it there under their endeavours. Or maybe it was left to me? It all seemed to elaborate, so unreal, I hadn't thought about it. You see, your honour, when you're in a dream, the self inside said dream doesn't know it is. They function methodically. They see this world as real and that's why you have fear. I had no fear, I had only panic, a sense of impending doom, like this was my tomb.

He was sitting inside the hollow of a tree, long pipe brought out of his mouth, a puff of multicoloured air dissipating into the stale air around the hollow that I was at. The sky had grown green with smog, perhaps it was smog? Trivial questions. I didn't ask them at the time.

Jin was sitting in that hollow, mouth curved upwards into a smile. I didn't think anything of it, other than the fact that the aura he was providing me was disturbing. Long fingers held the nozzle of a pipe between them, and I didn't notice the key he was holding until he brought it up moments afterwards.

"Hello, Angela." His response was timely, after a smoke of the pipe. "I had been anticipating your arrival for quite some time now, seeing as how I've been situated at waiting for you."

My mouth opened and shut.

"I suppose that you have an entirety of questions for me and under the consideration that I know of all, we'd have plenty of time to discuss and answer them of course under the pretences that you weren't the next Alice and I can hear her dogs from miles away." The words he spoke were transfixing, voice deep and calming. I knew something wasn't right though, the drawing tones of his words were unnerving, and I had managed to stand in front of the stump holding the knife inside it and drew it while I thought he wasn't looking. He was staring at the brunt of his pipe, almost as if thinking it was going to run out soon.

"Your first question is quite possibly something along the lines of 'how do I get out' as is most of their questions. However they seemed much more nervous. Panicky. Shaky. You seem to have a good grasp on the situation if it weren't for your shoulders, ah, so tense, but this isn't the case."

He took this time to lean forward, pulling at the key that was tucked inside of his shirt. I should have noticed the chain, I suppose, but that malicious feeling about his face was still present.

"You see, my _darling_," he spoke the last part with a particular endearment undertone, "You're going to need this key to achieve the ultimate- or at least, for _now_- the ultimate desire that you're after. This is referred to as the Key of Life, which is ever so cheesy if you ask me. You'll need this accompanied along with the Door of Spirits to find your way out." Another puff. I hadn't even noticed him take another drawl.

"This, however." He states it promptly, just as I had been about to speak. "Is not the key of life. You'll need it to open the case behind you." I hadn't noticed it. Had he conjured it just by his words? Or was I just blind to what was in front of me? "You're going to need to do something for me first to get it."

I wasn't in any place to question him, and my voice seemed unsure when I did speak, but I did so nonetheless. I had taken a step forward, almost as if against my own will, and his arms had snaked out after he had stood up to press his hands against either side of my face. His hands were gentle like a butterfly's wings, but his eyes said something different.

"I don't know half the words you're saying. What's an Alice? Why am I the Alice? What does anything you're saying have to do with _anything_-" My words were quickly stuttered by his fingers grazing across my mouth.

"Tut tut, child. These are things you'll learn with inevitability. You see, to get the key, you'll have to submit yourself to me."

I had frozen. His hands had some kind of power, his mouth was holding lies underneath truths that transfixed me, and he was attempting to get me to collapse under the weight of what he knew and what I didn't.

I remember acting on instinct. The last known moment of free will that I had as he was trying to take it from me, and your honour, I drove my knife into his stomach and ripped the key from his grasp before he hit the ground.

I remember my actions being quick, and quiet. I had the case in my hands in a matter of moments and was frantically trying to open it, but inside, there was just a mirror.

My face shone back at me. There was a white headband, something that hadn't been present at the time of my falling into this cataclysm of death and ruin. There was blood on my face of mine and Jin's.

I had realized that I was the next Alice, with inevitability. I had also realized that everyone in wonderland wanted me dead. I had heard the howling in the distance, her dogs were present and smelling the blood off my skin like ravenous werewolves in unspeakable frenzies.

I was the next Alice.

And everyone in wonderland wanted me dead.


End file.
